To City Councilman Frank Quintero, and themembers of the City Council of Glendale.
I have read of your decision to put up a permanent
memorial to the so called "Comfort Women" with deep
unease and regret. This is the same as putting up amemorial to the camp guards at Auschwitz.
If I were Jewish, I would find this a great insult. Even
though I am not Jewish, I find this insulting as ahistorian.
You are being conned. During the war, the Korean
people were Japanese citizens, and were willing andable participants in the Japanese Empire. It is afterthe war that they decided that they were victims, andswitched roles.
And even in their own country, Korea, women aredemonstrating for their right to be prostitutes. Yet
they accuse Japan of a crime?
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,20724
87,00.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43650531/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/s-korean-sex-workers-threaten-setthemselves-fire-protect-theirbrothels/#.UVoTg4VmGv9

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Protesting Korean prostitutes attempt to set
themselves on fire.
Let me explain.
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America is a country that treasures human rights forthe individual. And in particular, the rights of women
world wide are a concern for Americans. Whenpeople use the term "Sex Slave" to describe theComfort Women, it resonates in the United States.
But were these women indeed slaves? No. First ofall, as distasteful as it may seem, it was common inboth Japan and Korea pre war to sell daughters intoprostitution. For poor families with too many mouths
to feed, this was the only option.
As far as the comfort women were concerned, theywere paid. The recruiters were all ethnic
Koreans. People have conjured up an image of theImperial Japanese Army rampaging through Koreanvillages, and hauling off screaming women.
This never happened.
Please refer to the Pdf below.
http://www.google.co.jp/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&so
urce=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sdhfact.com%2FCL02_1%2F89_S4.pdf&ei=MaVSUZbjLc
fEkQW624F4&usg=AFQjCNGGResjVTolTk4gyz0uChvLACnT7Q&bvm=bv.44342787,d.dGI
On page 117, it lists some newspaper advertisements
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from 1944 for Comfort Women. As a matter ofreference, monthly pay is listed as ￥300. At that timea Japanese Imperial Army sergeant was paid ￥30 amonth.
The Korean government itself continued the Comfort
Women system post war for US troops.
I have written about it extensively in my blog. And I
have visited the Silver town mentioned in my blog
below.
http://tokyomaxtalks.blogspot.jp/2012/06/concerningcomfort-women-memorials.html
In any case, Koreans continued the system after thewar. And today, Koreans are the greatest humantraffickers in the United States.

If the Korean people in the United States are serious
about combatting prostitution, why do they notcooperate with the FBI and stop the traffickers fromtheir own community?
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There are no organized Japanese prostitutes in theUS at all. Those massage parlors you see withnames like Osaka and Nagoya, they are Korean.
In any case, Japan has paid extensive reparations toKorea.
http://www.jiyuushikan.org/e/reparations.html
At the time of payment, these funds were to settle all
claims, including the Comfort Women issue.
And Japan has apologized, endlessly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan
Now it seems that some Koreans simply want moremoney.
Koreans have a problem with history. Years ago
when I was in Korea, I was discussing WWII withsome Korean people. They insisted that their country
had the worst experience of the war.
I am a WWII historian, and I differ with thatassessment. My candidate for country with the worst
war experience, if I had to pick, would be
Poland. Invaded by both Germany and the Soviet
Union, Occupied by Germany, the Jewish Warsaw5Ghetto uprising of 1943, the Polish Home Army
Warsaw uprising of 1944 all devastated thecountry. Then the savage resistance of the German
Army as the Soviets pushed towards Berlin.
And of course there was constant guerrilla activity.
Postwar, Poland lost a third of it's eastern territory andwas ordered to takeover the former German territoriesof Prussia and Silesia. Many people were killed anddisplaced. All in all, Poland lost 25% of it's prewar
population.
But when I was in Korea, Korean people insisted that
their WWII experience was much worse than Poland.
That is when Korean people lost my sympathy for any
claim whatsoever about WWII.
The thing about Koreans is, they did not resist theJapanese annexation of their country. Most Koreansembraced it. And this is their shame today.
There was no resistance movement insideKorea. There was one major riot in 1919 where some
hundreds were killed. That was all. There was aguerrilla movement in the far north of the country, butthey could not base themselves inside Korea, theirbases were in Manchuria.
All they could do was make the occasional foray into6Korea, they received no help from the Koreanpopulace. And they numbered only about 1,500
individuals.
In April 1938, the Special Volunteers System
was inaugurated in Korea. Korean men
responded in droves for service in the JapaneseImperial Armed Forces. In 1942, the recruitment
goal was announced to be 4077.
254,273 volunteers applied, over-achievement factor
reached 62,4.
More Koreans have died fighting post war Korean
governments than fighting Japan.
For the March first movement riots, Japanese official
figures list 553 dead for all of Korea.
However, the list of casualties for post war South
Korean governments are; The Cheju incidentof 1948, the South Korean government admits tobetween 15,000 to 30,000 dead. (civilian groups put
the number at 100,000 dead)In the October 1948 Yosu Junten revolt 400 werekilled.
In the Korean war, in 1950, during the summer some
300,000 civilians were killed by the South Korean
government, and in the winter several hundred7

thousand more were killed.
Of course, figures of any kind for people killed by
North Korean governments are totally unavailable, but
one can imagine that many civilians must have been
killed in the North.
http://tokyomaxtalks.blogspot.jp/2012/08/presidentlee-myung-bak-and-his.html
Koreans will tell you that during war they were forced
to cooperate because Japan was so brutal. Well inEurope, many Balts, Ukrainians, Russians and othernationalities fought in German uniform, something like1 million.
Would the city of Glendale put up a memorial tothem? By putting up such an exhibition for the
Comfort Women, that is what you are doing.
But these countries also had anti German guerrilla
movements. Korea has no such history. And this istheir shame today. During WWII, they willingly fought
for Japan. They willingly recruited their own womenfor prostitution.
By putting up this exhibition, you are getting involved
with Korean inferiority complexes towards
Japan. And you are making serious historicalmistakes.
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The only evidence the Koreans now have are a few
eyewitnesses. Yet any historian will tell you,eyewitness testimony is very unreliable. You needother sources.
Things just did not happen like Koreans say theydid. I seriously ask you to do more research into thetrue nature of Japanese/Korean relations.
And to be fair, if you want to address women's issues,
you should address modern day Korean humantrafficking in the United States.
Thank you very much,
Max von Schuler-Kobayashi
April 3rd , 2013
Tokyo Japan9